Laugh, O Revolution: Humor in the Egyptian Uprising

Protesters deployed satire, irony, and outright mockery against the government

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Revolutions can be messy. They can be tragic. As long as the Internet is
working, they can be tweeted. And, as Egyptians demonstrated during
their 18 days of protest, they can also be funny.

In the English-language press, the post-game wrap-up of Egypt's uprising has largely focused on the role of new media
tools (as well as old ones, namely satellite television), which allowed
people to connect, organize and inform. Absent from most of this
analysis was an examination of one of the oldest and most subversive
political tools there is: humor. The steady stream of comedy flowing
throughout the square functioned much as Twitter and Facebook did: to
build community, strengthen solidarity, and provide a safe, thug-free
outlet for Egyptians to defy the regime.

Parody, Linda Hutcheons has written, repeats something familiar, but with a "potentially revolutionary"
difference. For Egyptians, did it get any more familiar than Hosni
Mubarak, whose rule lasted 29 long years? Whose Dracula-like face peered
down from signs and framed official photographs all over the country
(photographs that seemed to freeze him in the Twilight Zone of his
mid-fifties, where his hair color still remains)? Who greeted them every
morning from their state television and state-owned newspapers? As
Issandr El Amrani asked in his eerily prescient article on Mubarak jokes
written for Foreign Policy two months before the revolution began: What
would happen if you spent three decades making fun of the same man?

To Mahmoud Salem, an English-language blogger who goes by the name Sandmonkey
(because it "makes white people uncomfortable"), those 30 years of
non-stop derision -- including an Onion-esque fake news website, El Koshary Today
-- set the stage for the confrontation that began January 25. Directly
confronting the regime, he told me, would have been a "stupid move."

"It's
easier to make them look ridiculous," Salem said. But is humor, as some
suggest, a substitute for effective political action? "It's very
effective," he insisted, "because it breaks the fear barrier."

That
barrier began to fall not long after Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine
Ben Ali resigned office on January 14. Egyptians roared into the
street, kicking off their revolution with chants of "Hosni Mubarak, the plane is waiting!" a nod to Ben Ali's embarrassingly swift liftoff to Saudi Arabia.

The longer Mubarak stayed, the more the jokes piled up, much like the growing mound of trash in the center of Tahrir Square. Protesters renamed both the garbage pile and the toilets
renamed "National Democratic Party headquarters" -- a reference to
Mubarak's party, the real headquarters of which was destroyed by
protesters. When Vice President Omar Suleiman denounced the protesters' "foreign agendas,"
young people showed up to the square with plain blank notebooks, Salem
says. "Whoops," they told one another, "I left my 'agenda' at home."

When state television accused protesters of being foreign agents, paid with fistfuls of Euros and meals from Kentucky Fried Chicken, one protester filmed
his comrades enjoying their "KFC": humble sandwiches of bread and
cheese. And that $100 bribe? "I transferred it to Switzerland," one
grinning man tells the camera, falafel in hand.

As Egyptians
took to social media to spread news from the demonstrations and
encourage others to join them, the humor rampant in the street made it
into those social media dispatches as well. Many tweeted in English, and
thanks to translation software and human translators, the whole world
could get in on the joke.

"Photographs from Tahrir of people carrying hilarious signs went viral within minutes of posting," observed Adel Iskandar,
33, a media scholar and lecturer at Georgetown University. Sharing a
laugh, often in real time, created "a sense of solidarity and
camaraderie among those who supported the cause." Who could not identify
with the simple "Leave, my arm hurts"? Or, as the days wore on and on,
"Leave, I want to shower/see my wife/shave/get married."

The
jokes themselves often played on or through new media and its tropes. A
faked "Installing Freedom" screen grab showed files being copied from a
folder labeled /tunisia, overlaid with the error message, "Cannot
install Freedom. Please remove 'Mubarak' and try again." (A later
version of that joke announces "Installation freedom has finished
successfully.") While Mubarak is rumored to have never sent an email in
his 82 years, @HosniMubarak appeared on Twitter on January 25, joshing with the shabab
(youth) like an old pro. The next day, amid (false) reports that the
Mubaraks had fled to London, a follower inquired to the fake
presidential account after his family. "They're fine, thank you for
asking. Gamal just checked in at the Ritz on foursquare," @HosniMubarak
politely replied. Son and heir apparent Gamal, whose @GMubarak profile boasts "My Daddy owns Egypt," quickly materialized, as did wife @SuzanneMobarak.
On February 4, amid some of the worst crackdowns on journalists in
Egypt, @HosniMubarak tried to drum up a little extra cash. "I have 3
video cameras, 2 still cameras, 5 microphones, and 7 journalists for
sale," he tweeted. "They are all labelled 'Al Jazeera'."

As the
real Mubarak shuffled his cabinet, his new officials succumbed to ritual
sacrifice on the Twitter pyre. Activists satirized former Interior
Minister Habib El Adly (@HabibElAdly), Vice President Omar Soleiman (@OmarSoleiman), even Leader of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces Mohamed Tantawi (@ChiefTantawi),
whose profile describes him as "Kicking ass, taking names, and wearing
decorations with more colors than you can find in a pack of Skittles."

Despite
@ChiefTantawi's tweets to the contrary ("Release of prisoners,
disbanding Sate [sic] Security, firing cabinet and a civil government -
nice list of demands, would you like a unicorn too??"), the mere
existence of his fake account signaled that something had changed in
Egypt, where the widely revered military has traditionally been
satire-proof. As'ad AbuKhalil, 50, an academic who blogs as the Angry Arab,
noted that one of the few times that red line has ever been crossed was
in the wake of the 1967 defeat by Israel, when cynicism in Egypt ran at
an all-time high. Then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser was so concerned by
the public mockery of his troops that he gave a speech warning of the
damage that can be done to the community by jokes.

Not every punchline was contemporary. One that was circulating on email dredged up ancient animosities:

Dear Egyptian demonstrators,

Please do not damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild.

-The Jews

"Humour
is the default response to everything in Egypt including state
repression," says Egyptian-British journalist and blogger Sarah Carr,
34, whose "A letter received by our agony aunt" likened Egyptians' relationship with Mubarak to that of an oppressed wife trapped in a loveless marriage.

Dear Agony Aunt,

After
30 years with my husband I feel like I need a new start, but he doesn't
feel the same way, and now I can't get rid of him. [...]

He soon
developed a taste for the husband role however and within weeks was
preventing me from meeting in groups larger than five and locking me up
in our bedroom for weeks without telling anyone where I was if I
criticized his taste in shirts.

Carr
reflected, "Interestingly, the tougher circumstances get, the more the
jokes increase, which explains why Tahrir Square was essentially a
comedy explosion."

As events appeared to crescendo --
particularly the evening of what was expected to be Mubarak's
resignation speech -- the jokes rose to a fever pitch.

As the
scheduled hour of his speech came and went, Twitter users volunteered
possible #ReasonsWhyMubarakIsLate, which was trending at the top of
Twitter. Explanations ranged from @hosnimobarak's "I'm eating my KFC
meal" to one user's dig at pro-government media's refusal to fully cover
the protests: "he's watching egyptian tv...he still doesn't know it's
his last day in office." But as several "Mubarak is high" animated videos later chronicled, he refused to step down. Utah-based fiction writer @angelaperry tweeted, "Mubarak. Dude. Egyptians INVENTED writing on the wall. You really should learn to read it."

At
any point throughout the protests, did the regime fight funny with
funny? Longtime Cairo resident Issandr El Amrani observed that despite
once displaying a genial if unsophisticated wit, perhaps comparable to
that of George W. Bush, by end times, Mubarak had "too much of a sense
of importance and indispensability to have a sense of humor." The
government made a few lame attempts, according to Professor Iskandar,
such as a cartoon in state newspaper depicting a spoiled rich kid
protesting for higher wages. But, for the most part, the regime showed a
deep unawareness of its own unintentional irony. Often, says
34-year-old Marwa Elnaggar, a writer and activist, "the events and
official statements were more laughable than any jokes we made up." She
compiled a list of "Laugh With the Revolution" moments, such as
Suleiman's polite request to thousands of newly escaped prisoners to
kindly return to their respective prisons. Mubarak's eventual
departure on February 11 signaled neither the end of strikes nor the end
of jokes in Egypt. A wave of quips still whiz around SMS and Twitter,
hinting at the domino effect of Egypt's success. "After 'Victory Friday'
in Tunisia & 'Liberation Friday' in Egypt Gaddafi has decided to
abolish all Fridays," read one. Another: "Dear Arab people: What happens
in Egypt stays in Egypt. Sincerely, Arab dictators".

Says
Iskandar, who is originally from Cairo, "Not only can I not imagine a
revolution in Egypt without jokes, I cannot imagine anything in Egypt
without jokes. The day Egyptians stop joking or laughing is the day they
have nothing to worry about."

During that happy night of celebration following Mubarak's resignation, a musician led a crowd of protesters in "Laugh, O Revolution,"
a call-and-response tune. "Laugh, O Revolution," he sings. Whistling,
clapping and waving the Egyptian flag, the revolutionaries happily
shouted back the chorus: "Ha ha ha."

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